Free for All | Page 8

rearrange them to hook up to
coffee machines or networks. They want to fidget with the guts of their machines. If they
weld some spaghetti to the insides, so be it.
Normally, these battles between the suits and the geeks don't threaten the established
order. There are university students around the world building solar-powered cars, but

they don't actually pose a threat to the oil or auto industries. "21," a restaurant in New
York, makes a great hamburger, but they're not going to put McDonald's out of business.
The experimentalists and the perfectionists don't usually knock heads with the
corporations who depend upon world domination for their profits. Except when it comes
to software.
Software is different from cars or hamburgers. Once someone writes the source code,
copying the source costs next to nothing. That makes it much easier for tinkerers like Cox
to have a global effect. If Cox, Stallman, Torvalds, and his chums just happen to luck
upon something that's better than Microsoft, then the rest of the world can share their
invention for next to nothing. That's what makes Cox, Torvalds, and their buddies a
credible threat no matter how often they sleep late.
It's easy to get high off of the idea alone. A few guys sleeping late and working in
bedrooms aren't supposed to catch up to a cash engine like Microsoft. They aren't
supposed to create a webserving engine that controls more than half of the web. They
aren't supposed to create a graphical user interface for drawing windows and icons on the
screen that's much better than Windows. They aren't supposed to create supercomputers
with sticker prices of $3,000. Money isn't supposed to lose.
Of course, the folks who are working on free software projects have advantages that
money can't buy. These programmers don't need lawyers to create licenses, negotiate
contracts, or argue over terms. Their software is free, and lawyers lose interest pretty
quickly when there's no money around. The free software guys don't need to scrutinize
advertising copy. Anyone can download the software and just try it. The programmers
also don't need to sit in the corner when their computer crashes and complain about the
idiot who wrote the software. Anyone can read the source code and fix the glitches.
The folks in the free source software world are, in other words, grooving on freedom.
They're high on the original American dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The founders of the United States of America didn't set out to create a wealthy country
where citizens spent their days worrying whether they would be able to afford new sport
utility vehicles when the stock options were vested. The founders just wanted to secure
the blessings of liberty for posterity. Somehow, the wealth followed.
This beautiful story is easy to embrace: a group of people started out swapping cool
software on the Net and ended up discovering that their free sharing created better
software than what a corporation could produce with a mountain of cash.
The programmers found that unrestricted cooperation made it easy for everyone to
contribute. No price tags kept others away. No stereotypes or biases excluded anyone.
The software and the source code were on the Net for anyone to read.
Wide-open cooperation also turned out to be wide-open competition because the best
software won the greatest attention. The corporate weasels with the ear of the president
could not stop a free source software project from shipping. No reorganization or
downsizing could stop people from working on free software if they wanted to hack. The

freedom to create was more powerful than money.
That's an idyllic picture, and the early success of Linux, FreeBSD, and other free
packages makes it tempting to think that the success will build. Today, open source
servers power more than 50 percent of the web servers on the Internet, and that is no
small accomplishment. Getting thousands, if not millions, of programmers to work
together is quite amazing given how quirky programmers can be. The ease of copying
makes it possible to think that Alan Cox could get up late and still move the world.
But the 1960s were also an allegedly idyllic time when peace, love, and sharing were
going to create a beautiful planet where everyone gave to everyone else in an eternal
golden braid of mutual respect and caring. Everyone assumed that the same spirit that so
quickly and easily permeated the college campuses and lovefests in the parks was bound
to sweep the world. The communes were really happening, man. But somehow, the
groovy beat never caught on beyond those small nests of easy caring and giving.
Somehow, the folks started dropping back in, getting real jobs, taking on real mortgages,
and buying back into the world where money was